Some people think the “we” campaign is just a drop in the vast ocean of consumer advertising. In his New York Times article about the campaign, Andrew Revkin, quotes John Murphy Jr., associate professor of marketing at the University of Iowa:
“I think the global warming project media budget should be 10 times as high,” he said. “Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi spend over a billion dollars each year to promote brand preference for soft drinks. In this light, the $100 million per year to change our lifestyles seems pretty small.”
For some more perspective, here is the list of the top 10 brands with their yearly ad budgets – from Ad Age Top 200 Brands:
I understand the “we” campaign’s strategy of targeting ‘influentials’, and of trying to stretch their $300 million budget that way. It is a smart move, but cleverness can only go so far.
La Marguerite 
Well, we will have to see. Pepsi or Coke it is just the same ol’ story, a mere drink.
Fighting climate change can be inspirating, can be a goal to the millions of people that are looking for something to leave behind,
Taking part in the mitigation of climate change is to me a very good occasion to do something for the common good. (and also to save money, act for a better future for everyone… )
And basically, I do not believe it is a question of how much money you put, but how you use it. and why for ! 🙂
Keep up the good work, your blog is very very interesting. I added to my rss feeds ! 😀
LaM,
Good post, and lots of food for thought.
All this gave me a chilling thought, and I relay it here as a comment not as an
advocate of what I am going to say, but just to say it in public, and
not for shock value, but for a new perspective on things:
The situation is such that most people do not understand or feel that
global warming or climate change is a problem now, or ever will be in
the future. Something like 56 percent of the US population is not
convinced. And worldwide, maybe 80 percent of our fellow Earthlings
are not convinced.
So it might take, not only media campaigns like Al Gore’s
recently-announced advertising platform, but also maybe, and I say
this with a heavy heart, but maybe, it might also take things similar
to what we witnessed during Vietnam War era in the USA, when one
routinely saw photos in the newspapers and on TV and in Time and
Newsweek magazines about Buddhist monks in Vietnam setting themselves
on fire in protest on the streets of Vietnam. Remember those startling
images? And of course, most of those monks later died in hospital from
the burns, if they didn’t die right then and there on the street.
http://vietnamresearch.com/media/anti/index.html
So I wonder if one day in the future, and I hope not, but it might
happen, so get ready, I wonder if someday some climate protesters,
young people or older people, Buddhist monks or Christian activists,
might create a public protest whereby they set themselves on fire with
gasoline in Washington or New York, in front of the UN building, or in
Paris or London or anywhere, and use these self-immolation protests to
say to the world community: “We must stop killing the Earth now!”
Such protest-suicides, like the Vietnam War era suicides of monks
aflame, might have such visual power as to make people who are not
convinced do a re-think of the situation — and not only individual
people, but policy makers and government leaders.
Again, I hope to never see such a public suicide protest of setting
oneself afire and dying for this cause. But your post above about
advertising strategies put this
Buddhist-monk-in-orange-clothes-aflame image in my mind on this
tranquil Thursday morning…
EDVARD MUNCH, 1893, THE SCREAM:
http://northwardho.blogspot.com
Edouard, I think it is BOTH a matter of how much you spend and how you use that money.
Dan, I hear your cry for attention, and I am sure as the threat draws nearer, and more real to people, activism will grow stronger, although I am not yet clear under which form. The big difference between the Vietnam War, and global warming, is the latter does not have a human face. That in itself, is conjuring and will conjure very different responses.
LaM,
You wrote:
“The big difference between the Vietnam War, and global warming, is the latter does not have a human face.”
Exactly. Well said, Marguerite. We need someone like Bernard Henri-Levi to write a new book titled “Global Warming with a Human Face”.
In a way, global warming’s threat DOES have a human face now, all of our faces, all the faces you see each day as you walk, bicycle and drive through your home city or town. But 56 percent of the USA does not believe climate change is real, maybe more.
And if someone like Al Gore or Ted Turner or James Lovelock speaks out, the rightwing disblogosphere lights up like a Christmas tree. And same when Rush Limburger or Hannity or Pat Robertson speaks up. The left trashes them.
We ARE at war now, but I guess we still don’t know WHO we are fighting. Maybe there is nothing that we can do about this, maybe this is all in the cards, maybe this is evolution writ large.
Here’s a ”cri du coeur” worth seeing (and hearing) — not mine, but Edvard Munch’s, way back in 1893. “Boss, Boss, The Scream, the Scream!”
THE SCREAM UPDATED:
http://northwardho.blogspot.com